Wolf Moon
by Reincarnated Poet
Summary: The Sarmatians were born of Scythians and Amazons, both proud and fierce races. Rome has looked over the mother race, condemning the female as the weaker sex and thus, not worth their reaping. A daughter of her mother's people, a wolf will defend what is hers more fiercely than the Romans have ever seen. Hera help those in her way, be they Roman or Saxon.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: The first three chapters are pre-movie. After that you're getting into concurrent with the film and after. Please note that names I've used in here are as close to what I can find that would have been names used by the races at the time. Additionally, the characters I'm writing aren't always supposed to be likable. I've tried to make them as realistic as possible.

**Warning: There are strong themes in this chapter.** Mentions of rape and infanticide among them. I attempted to keep this vague, but I'm trying to keep this piece as realistic as possible, both the darkness and the light.

Wolf Moon

Chapter One - A She Wolf Born

Thunder rolled off of the Black Sea as it always did. Wind rocked the water up and crashed it down to the land as lightening struck the sky, sending an eerie glow about the small village beside the sea.

The world was agony. Inside a thatched hut, not fifty yards from where the waters churned, a girl was at war. Sixteen and still fairly small, she writhed on a birthing bed, teeth set firmly into her bottom lip to keep herself from crying out.

"Push girl," a midwife said from between her knees, as her eyes rolled back into her head as another wave of pain ripped through her. A fire had been lit, casting the thatch hut into a dull orange glow. One door stood opposite her, and she glared at it with as much vitriol as she could muster.

Her husband was outside that door, she knew, waiting for the cries of a child that she didn't want to force from between her legs, a child he had planted there while holding her down and covering her mouth to keep her from snarling at him.

"Push!" The midwife ordered, smacking her inner thigh hard, drawing her attention. "Ya don't push, girl, and the babe's going ta die inside ya." The girl smiled through the pain, teeth clenched hard together as she tried to keep her muscles from doing just as the woman demanded.

"I'll kill it," she hissed out between the crashing waves of pain, trying to draw her legs together and keep the damnable creature inside of her until it suffocated. "I'll kill it and let it rot inside me. It will stink and fester and in the end, when it kills me, he'll have the satisfaction of his dead son." She spat, biting viciously into her lip again when the pain came more fiercely.

She was a small woman still, not wide enough to bare a child, but Dnaestre hadn't considered that when he claimed her as spoils of a war her people lost and laid himself into her. The cursed thing in her belly was ripping her apart as it tried to leave her body.

"You'll kill it," the midwife said, voice harsh. She was of the girl's people, taken at the same time she had been but was far too old to be taken to bed. The woman was Tereis, a woman well known for her might on the battle field until her back had bent with age. "Anaxilea, you will kill the thing growing in you, and you will kill yourself. If this is your path, do it with honor." She demanded, standing from between the girl's knees with a growl and drawing a dagger from her waist.

"He will have no son from me," Anaxilea boasted, face contorting in pain as the child fought for freedom.

"Then give him a daughter," Tereis said, as firm as ever. "Push girl, see another Amazon born to the people, and prove to him that he's taken nothing from you." The dark haired girl glared up at the midwife for a long moment, the pain lining her face and drawing her lips up into a near snarl. Her dark eyes stared at the woman until finally, she nodded, and with all the strength left in her, she pushed.

No cry split the air as something slick forced its way from Anaxilea as she gave one last great push, collapsing as Tereis held up her child. The infant didn't cry out or scream, the only sign it still lived was the faint kicking in its legs and the odd way it clawed at its own neck. "The birthing cord," Tereis murmured, cutting the thing away with her dagger and urging the child to breath as its movements slowed and its face went blue.

"I've killed her," Anaxilea murmured as the pain and fatigue caught her up. "I killed that which he put in me." Tereis looked down sharply at the girl, but her eyes had slipped shut and her breathing had fallen into a labored rhythm.

"Breath, girl," Tereis urged, eyeing the redness around the child's neck and mouth where the umbilical cord had gotten caught, cutting off the movement of blood and air. The little thing had it up in it's mouth, toothless gums gnawing at it as if it could chew through the thing. "Born of storm and a warrior in the womb, you'll breath now, Hera take you!" Tereis yelled at the child, giving her a harsh shake and a smack on the back.

The child gurgled, and just as Tereis though she'd struck the child too hard, she drew breath and let a low growl. The midwife sat back on her old, aching haunches, and sighed. Anaxilea was a proud girl, born to be a queen of their people and forced into slavery. There would be a time though, Tereis was certain, there would be a time when the young queenly lioness of the Amazon people looked down at her daughter and saw her as more than the man that raped her.

AN: There are some darker themes in this piece, as was warned about above. I tried to keep them nondescript as possible, but these things happened and often in the warring worlds.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own King Arthur or the rendering done by the film in 2004, which this piece is based upon.

Chapter Two: Of Oaths of Blood and Oaths in Blood

Anaxilea nursed her daughter because Dnaestre had pushed the thing away from him as soon as he'd realized she'd stolen from him a son. There was a sickly sense in her at that, something that relished in his disapproval.

So she let the half-Scythian suckle at her breast, hissing with pain when the girl gummed her fiercely. The infant gave a little grunt as it was pulled away and held at arm's length more violently than was necessary for the small hurt.

"You'll kill her yet, shakin' her like that," Tereis chided, taking the baby away to offer it goat's milk, something that the babe took more often than her mother's. Of course, the rough treatment Anaxilea had given her since her birth was more than enough excuse.

"She has to learn," Anaxilea defended. "I've only the one breast, Tereis. You and your sisters held me down when I was only a week older than that thing in your arms, and held a red-hot blade against the other." The girl was being petulant, Tereis knew. She'd always been proud that she had the shape of her mother's people until she realized the hardship that came with motherhood.

"You have growing to do, yet," Tereis countered. "If your mother shook you every time you bit at her, you'd have died before you were one of our people."

"If my mother had stood beside her people instead of turning her own blade on herself when she'd lost, maybe I would find the will to care," Anaxilea murmured, covering herself and rising from the thatch mattress.

The girl had been hiding in the birthing hut for the better part of a week since her daughter's birth, not willing to return to Dnaestre's shadow. The tall Scythian hadn't come looking for her either, for which she would silently be grateful.

"Some choose death over servitude," Tereis answered. There were no pretty words that would erase what their queen had done. She had seen their defeat and had taken the coward's way. There was little that could be said in defense except: "Then again, some choose to kill babies instead of themselves."

"I didn't kill the-"

"You deny that if the squalling thing you pushed from your body had been a boy, you'd have laid it to the knife?" Tereis asked, her old face lined heavily with a scowl. Anaxilea didn't argue, and instead, collapsed back to the mattress and held her hands out for the infant.

"Give it here, then, if she's to learn, it better be quickly," Anaxilea said, hands grabbing too roughly when the child was given back to her.

"You'll have to name her eventually," Tereis advised. "Before she is married herself and still being called it."

"I've given her a name," the younger girl said, voice thick with annoyance. "Is it my fault you choose to ignore it?"

"You can't call the girl Atanea," Tereis said, exasperated at the return in conversation. It had been something they'd argued about time and time again.

"Why? Dnaestre was pleased as much with it as any other name. He gave it to his people when they asked."

"I will not call a week old infant traitor," Tereis said firmly. "If you wish Dnaestre to not recognize the child as his own people, let it be Atanea, but I will not hear you giving an exile's name to a babe." The old woman was fiercely demanding, and Anaxilea had to admit that she was damned convincing when she was so threatening.

"Ow," she hissed, down at the child, who gummed her nipple with force. "Gods, she bites like a wolf." Tereis smiled at that.

"A wolf born in the storm," Tereis said with a nod. "Strong."

"Not so much," Anaxilea countered, though despite her want to deny it, she knew the older woman was right. She should be pleased that the girl fought so fiercely; it was a sign that their people would have been thankful for.

"Wolves kill each other over nothing," Anaxilea said. "Perhaps she is a wolf."

"Wolves also kill Scythians who have lost their way," Tereis countered, knowing the imagery would please the girl. The old woman crouched low over a slow boiling heavy pot in the corner. She signed as she looked over at the girl-and she was a girl, the old woman realized-who occasionally winced and gave the infant a firm shake.

"What name would you give her?" Anaxilea asked after a long silence. Tereis's brown eyes studied both girls a long while. Anaxilea was looking down at the girl for the first time with soft eyes. The child had fallen asleep with her head against her mother's breast.

"Lykopis," Tereis breathed, the name pulling fiercely at her heart.

"I don't recognize that name," Anaxilea said after a moment. "No one in the tribe had that name."

"My mother did," Tereis acknowledged quietly. No one had had the name of the She-Wolf since her mother's passing. None would again, unless it was this child, Tereis knew.

"And did your mother kill Scythians?" Anaxilea asked.

"From the day she was given a blade until the day she died protecting me," Tereis confirmed, the ache of memories heavy on her. Anaxilea nodded, and they sat in silence for a long while, until the smell of the fish boiling in the pot was thick in the air.

"To the people," Anaxilea said as they sat with their hollowed stone bowls. "To the people she will be Lykopis. Let her father's people call her Atanea."

Tereis watched the young woman with knowing eyes for a long while before nodding. The wolf of her people. The opposition of the Scythians. Somehow, Tereis knew, that would prove far more true than anything else she had ever heard.

-RP: Wolf Moon-

Death was something that the Scythians did not spend time relishing. Their enemies died just as easily as their friends, so when nearly their entire army was laid waste by the Romans despite their horses and their fierceness, no one mourned long over the dead.

None except those who knew the weight of their freedom. Fifteen years from all sons. Fifteen years and Rome would return to them men that were no longer Scythian, men that had forgotten their own people, if they returned at all.

Anaxilea nearly reveled in the irony of it. Her future had been stolen away, and not the future of the thing Dnaestre wanted most was gone. Her belly would swell soon, she knew. Dnaestre had returned from their battles with a limp and a scar that split his face, but he had returned virile.

Anaxilea asked Artemis for a girl-child every night and every morning. She had come a long way in the eleven years since the birth of her daughter, and even Tereis had to admit that she was taking this child with more grace than the first.

"It will be soon, mother?" Lykopis's voice startled her from her study of the funerary pyres that had burned to nothing months ago. The men had left them, as a symbol of their dead comrades and the promise to Rome. She looked down to her daughter, with her dark hair and eyes. Often times, looking at the girl was like looking into a calm pond.

"Soon enough," she said with a sigh. Time had tempered the sixteen year old girl into a woman, one that was proud but far calmer. The girl at her side would be much the same way; Anaxilea had seen to that each night. Without her husband there, she was free to raise her daughter in any way she wished, and she had taken that freedom as far as she could stretch it. He had been gone for six of their daughter's years, but it was not enough in either of their eyes.

"How does it fit in there?" Lykopis asked, this time her voice was colored with confusion. It took Anaxilea a few long moments to realize that her daughter's eyes were fixed firmly on her abdomen. The woman threw her dark head of hair back and laughed to the Gods above. She had just told the girl, not even minutes before, how she would be sent a sibling.

"It is very small, at first," Anaxilea said in agreement. "But it grows. You have to defend her when she is small."

"Yes," Lykopis breathed, tearing her eyes away from the front of her mother's tunic. The girl turned then, ran a few paces towards the base of one of the pyres and picked up an old, battle blunted ax head that someone had laid atop the pyres. She ran back with it, holding it out for Anaxilea to see. Fiercely, she brought her little hand down on the chipped blade end, face scrunched up in a grim line until she dropped the weapon.

Anaxilea watched as her daughter upturned her hand, now lined with blood. "I swear," she said firmly, though her voice wavered from the pain.

"I believe you," Anaxilea replied, bending to draw the girl toward her and wrap her hand with a bit of cloth. "Blood is a powerful thing to swear by," Anaxilea told her daughter, but she knew the girl already had heard time and time again.

"It binds a promise," she said with a nod and a grimace as the bandage was pulled tight.

"It does bind a promise," Anaxilea agreed, straightening up and glaring up at the heavens. How many nights had she bound promises in blood with her Gods? How many times had her Gods abandoned those promises?

They broke another promise months later, as Anaxilea lay panting on the thatch birthing mattress again. Lykopis curled in the corner, eyes wide as Tereis - old Tereis who could only half see and who needed carried to the birthing hut - guided her mother through what they called the coming of her sister.

A few other women, women that Lykopis hated because of their whispered words about her mother's feverish skin or her pallor, stood around, helping when Tereis needed something she couldn't reach or see.

"She birthed the girl without screaming," one woman whispered. "But listen to her pant. Dnaestre was a big child, or so his mother claimed."

"I've heard the old ones talk about infants too large," another whispered back. Lykopis hated those women for their words. Fiercely, she bit into her bottom lip, trying to keep her tongue in check. Tereis motioned for something else, which was handed to her in silence.

Another woman across the hut muttered something that sparked the old woman's ire. "Out, all of you!" She shouted at the women. "This is not your sewing circle." And they had left, silent and shame faced. Lykopis kept her seat in the corner, quietly wondering at the power in the old woman.

"You will do this, girl," Tereis told her mother, and Lykopis wondered at how silly it was to say. Of course she would. There was no other option. The little girl looked on as her mother grew more and more pale, seemed to struggle with each wave of pain. She would protect her sister until she was big enough to protect herself, she'd sworn over and over. As her mother gave a keening, broken sound that Lykopis had never heard her make before, she quietly promised the Gods she'd protect her mother as well.

"It comes," Tereis said almost too long later. "Push, girl. Show me the strength you showed me in the storm." It made no sense to Lykopis, but it spurred her mother on as she pushed once more, collapsing back to the mattress as a high pitched cry pierced the air.

Tereis took her away, shifting just enough to reach a blanket to wrap the child in. "Is she well?" Anaxilea asked, and Tereis's silence made both mother and daughter uncomfortable.

"Tell me if she's well," Anaxilea repeated herself long, agonizing moments later.

"He is healthy," Tereis said, her nearly white eyes turning toward Anaxilea, whose face crumpled. Lykopis wondered at the thought of a brother instead of a sister. Little did it matter though, in her eleven year old mind, until Tereis laid the child in her mother's arms.

Anaxilea had never been gentle with Lykopis, had never settled for less than strength either with the bow or the practice sword or riding, but she had never been unnecessarily cruel. It was shocking as her mother nearly dropped the child to the mattress and reached with blind fingers until they closed around a heavy object.

Horror and confusion flushed hot in the little girl's chest as her mother emptied a water pot and brought it high above her head with shaking hands, hesitating just a moment over the child before bringing it down hard.

"No!" The girl shouted, and lunged, little arms catching the pot and tearing it from her mother's hands. The weakness there astounded her. Never before had she been able to take something from her mother so easily. Dark eyes glared into dark eyes for a long while.

"It is not your sister," Anaxilea said at last. "It is your father's son."

"Blood is a powerful thing to swear by," Lykopis snarled at her mother, something that had gotten her struck in the past. Anaxilea's dark eyes widened for a moment until she let her arms fall to her sides.

"It binds a promise," Anaxilea said on a sigh that sounded far too exhausted to her daughter's ears. She lay back down on the thatched mattress as if it was her grave and let her eyes slip shut. Old Tereis picked the boy back up, wrapping him securely in another blanket and handed him to Lykopis, who took the child firmly, despite his weight.

"Take him to Dnaestre. A father names his son," Tereis said firmly, and Lykopis complied, ready to flee the birthing tent and the image of her mother - both too weak to sit and too weak to allow a child to live.

Dnaestre called him Galahad and took the boy from Lykopis's arms with a fierceness she had never seen in her father. He did not ask after his wife, and it would be weeks before Lykopis saw her mother again. It would be months before Anaxilea could look at her daughter again.

The first time Lykopis saw Anaxilea, her mother was walking far along one of the rises, a black form against the salt speckled grasses. The Black Sea seemed to make everything a dull grey with its salt and wind. Anaxilea had always seemed untouched by the land, something Lykopis thought magical when she was very young.

Old Tereis had asked Lykopis and another woman to help her to sit out on a hill, and had begged the girl to stay with her while the older left them. The girl had never been comfortable under the pale, milky eyes of Tereis, but she was of her mother's people, so Lykopis sat quietly.

Her mother had appeared just over a rise not long into their sit, and Lykopis set about studying her, trying to find that flaw in her that would let her kill the infant that Lykopis had sworn to protect. Tereis's milky eyes were turned toward her, and it made the girl more and more uncomfortable.

"What?" Lykopis finally asked, voice dangerously close to the snarl that she tried to keep from her tone. Of all of the adults that had struck her for it though, Tereis always did so lightly, more affectionate than angry.

"I have a gift for you," Tereis said finally, and drew an old oil skin from beneath the folds of her clothing. How the old woman had managed to keep it hidden, Lykopis would never know.

"What is it?" She asked, sitting forward on her knees, her mother gone from her mind. Gifts were few and far between, and a gift from Tereis moreso.

The oilskin was drawn back reverently, with shaking hands. Despite her half blind eyes, the woman was deft, never fumbling as she unwrapped cloth and leather thongs. Inside, the sharp grey on black coloring of a wolf's pent peeked. Finally, Tereis held it out to her, and Lykopis took it with delicate hands.

A wolf-a large beast, larger than any wolf Lykopis had ever seen-had been skinned completely down, and the pelt stretched. The bottom jaw of the creature fell wide, and the eye holes were eerie and empty.

"A wolf's pelt, for the naked wolf," Tereis murmured, a smile on her lips. Lykopis scoffed at the statement. The old woman had called her naked wolf time and time again throughout their brief interactions. "Put it on. There is a hood, to pull up over your eyes." She did as she was commanded, and surely enough, the pelt at been worked until it stretched up and over her entire head, falling well past her eyes, blinding her.

"It's too big," Lykopis muttered, pulling it off.

"Good," Tereis countered. "If it wasn't, you'd never be able to grow into it." The old woman held it in her lap, and they sat there for long hours, Tereis explaining how to oil the pelt and Lykopis half listening.

The sun was sinking over the harsh wind swept grasses when the young woman who helped Tereis to the hill approached again. "I'll find my own way," Tereis shoo'd her, and the woman went without question.

"I should-"

"There is another gift, in the skin," Tereis said, cutting her off. The woman's voice was hoarse, tired from talking for so long. Lykopis pulled the oil skin toward her and carefully finishing unfolding it. From within, an odd blade fell, and as Lykopis picked it up, she recognized the series of blades as claws.

Tereis took the odd weapon from her and put it to her own hand, showing Lykopis how the worked metal pulled down over her hand, and how to grip the bar holding the claws so that they were pulled firm against the back of her hand, extending forward like the reaching paw of the wolf.

"Mother won't let me have a weapon of my own until I've proved I can use it," Lykopis said carefully as the old woman laid the claws into her lap.

"You made a promise in blood to protect that boy," Tereis said firmly. "You'll need something to keep that promise." Lykopis sat quiet for a long while before pulling the weapon down onto her hand as Tereis had done. It was too big in her small hand, but the bar of it laid directly along the scar she'd made with her promise that day.

"It is perfect," she said, voice thick and gravel through a sudden lump in her throat. Tereis chuckled tiredly at her comment. "You made these?"

"They were given to my mother," Tereis countered. "She shared your name. The claws themselves have to be replaced over time, because they become brittle, but the pelt will stay if you oil it as I showed you." Lykopis nodded firmly and looked at the eerie pelt with new eyes.

Old Tereis sent her home shortly after the sun sank low over the horizon. Lykopis had asked her if she should find someone to help her down, but the woman had shook her head and shoo'd her away.

That was the last Lykopis saw of Tereis. The next morning, the woman was found, dead on the hilltop. The Scythians did not linger over death, and Tereis was laid on a funerary pyre and burned in the early hours of the morning. The ashes of the timber were swept up in the wind, and Lykopis watched them through tear-blurred eyes. Downwind, along the salt-speckled grasses, her mother stood, watching the fire burn. The grey of the ash bespeckled her the same grey as the land.

So-Lykopis thought bitterly with the wolf's claw and pelt hugged tight to her chest-her mother was not untouchable after all.

* * *

Tereis had been right, in her final moments, to give her the claws, Lykopis decided a few years later, when she stood in front of her four year old brother. The metal bit into her palm, but the wicked blades were what glinted with blood.

Galahad was on his back in the sea-stained grass, a cut across his little forehead. She'd been slow, just a little too slow. It didn't matter though. The older boy, eight or nine, had gotten a good blow in, hitting Galahad in the head with his wooden practice sword.

The other boy had paid for the blow four-fold where the wicked claws had slid deeply into his shoulder. It was the first time Lykopis had drawn blood with them, the first time that she'd really used any weapon more than on her own in practice. Anaxilea had retreated back from even her daughter after Tereis's death, leaving her to learn on her own under the firm and unfair hand of her father.

As he had aged, there was a softening to the man, especially after the ailment last year, where half of his body had refused to function. To that day on the plain, when Lykopis used the claws for the first time and pulled the wolf fur over her head, the left side of her father's face refused to lift up.

"Atanea," Galahad said from the ground, his voice thick with tears. "Atanea, help," and she had, turning from the younger boy and letting him run to his own mother. She eased Galahad upright, sharp brown eyes studying the gash on his forehead for a long while before sighing and letting the claws slip away from her knuckles.

"Let's get you to father, little cub," she said, but her voice cracked. At fifteen, the daughter of a reclusive Amazon war-prize and the wearer of the morbid wolf pelt, Atanea was not well accepted into the Scythian village. Lykopis was even more feared.

Galahad clung to her back without second thought, and let himself be carried back down a rise in the plain and toward their hut, where Dnaestre would be waiting. Not for the first or last time, Lykopis wondered at the slightness to her brother, the weakness to his body.

It would be a little over a year later that that weakness would truly become tragedy, when the red-maned Romans came riding over the rise. Dnaestre had spotted them first, just cresting one of the taller hills in the distance, and he had gone silent, gathering a pack without words to either of his children.

The stories that the men whispered to themselves around fires at night were coming true, and Lykopis knew her brother would be gone with the high sun. She sought out her mother for the first time in years.

"Anaxilea," she called across the small wind swept garden they kept behind the hut. Little would grow in the saline ground, but they tried anyway. The woman was bent over a stubborn bit of greenery that Lykopis couldn't identify in her sixteen year old mind.

"Does a daughter call her mother by her name?" Anaxilea asked but didn't bother to straighten.

"I wouldn't know. I haven't seen my mother in five years," Lykopis countered, and her mother's dark head of hair fell slightly before the salt-speckled woman straightened slowly and turned toward her daughter. It was laughable, really, Lykopis thought as she looked at her mother directly for the first time in years, that she had once thought this woman perfectly untouchable.

"Fair enough," Anaxilea answered, wiping soil stained hands on her tunic.

"Romans came over the rise," Lykopis said, explaining her interruption.

"The Scythians have what is coming to them," Anaxilea said bitterly, turning back toward her garden. "Let Dnaestre suffer." The pair stood there a long time, neither talking or looking at the other.

"Then you will suffer alone," Lykopis said finally. "I will follow him, and I will bring him back to the only thing he knows." Her mother's startled eyes looked to her then, truly, for the first time in so long.

"You punish me," Anaxilea said at last. "You won't bring him back. The Romans will kill all of their sons in fifteen years."

"Probably, but not what is mine," Lykopis agreed. "I've been protecting him from everything since you tried to kill him."

"He was the son of the man that took my people!" Anaxilea defended herself, voice firm and angry.

"He was your son!" Lykopis growled low, her voice had taken on the rough rumble nearly constantly from lack of use over the years. "And he is my brother. If you've done anything for him it was making me strong enough to protect him from this." Lykopis turned and left her mother there, knee deep in failing plants, ever the failure of a mother.

The Romans came with little fan-fair, which settled well enough with everyone. Lykopis watched with sharp eyes as six men waited for their boys to leave their mother's skirts or their father's sides.

Galahad went first, and for that, she was silently proud. The little boy, smaller than the rest and the second youngest to be taken from the village, left Dnaestre's side with a too-big sword strapped to his back.

_"It's too heavy?" Anaxilea taunted as Lykopis tried to lift her blade. "Good, this ends lives," her mother told her, bending in front of her and lifting the sword with ease. "It should be the heaviest thing you ever carry."_

Tears had fallen silently down Dnaestre's face as his son took the first steps away, leading the others toward their future. Lykopis couldn't help but think that they were taking the long walk to their own funerary pyres.

She watched for only a moment before ducking into their hut and pulling her the wolf pelt cloak and the claws from her bed furs. Tereis had been right, she was growing into both of them.

"If you're fool enough to go, you'll need more than a pelt," Anaxilea's harsh voice cut through the hut, freezing Lykopis where she stood. How long had it been since her mother had entered her own home? There were rumors that the woman simply slipped into the earth at night, disappearing and reappearing when the sun rose. Lykopis wasn't so sure that they weren't true.

"What else do I have to take?" Lykopis asked, her dark brown eyes locking on her mother, who crossed easily to a small trunk that had been pushed to the end of Dnaestre's sleeping pallet. From within the wooden trunk, Anaxilea pulled an old blanket, bulky and useless for travel, setting it down on the ground. "I can't carry-"

"Quiet," Anaxilea told her daughter, a small smile on her lips. "Look," she said, unwrapping the blanket and pulling from it a set of leather armor, old and of a make Lykopis had never seen before. "Mine, from before. Dnaestre kept it as a reminder of what he had conquered."

"It will never fit me," Lykopis countered, but her mother was undoing buckles with deft fingers and pulling pieces across her chest and abdomen, arms and legs without difficulty. When it had all finally gone into place, Anaxilea took a step back, a hand across her mouth and eyes lingering over the leather.

"Bend, move. Feel the weight and the give," she ordered, and begrudgingly, Lykopis followed her mother's commands. The leather moved well with her, hampering little, but it wouldn't hold up to a blade or an arrow.

"It's not going to protect me from anything," she said, trying to find fault with the gift. Wearing her mother's armor was something that would have thrilled her as a child. Now, she almost felt like it was a betrayal to her brother.

"It isn't meant to keep you from being run through," Anaxilea countered. "You have to be quick and smart. This will keep glancing blows from doing any damage and let you be faster than your opponent." She looked down at the leather one last time before looking at her daughter again. The woman's breath caught in her throat as she took in her dark hair and eyes, the scowl on her face. Truly, she marveled, this was like looking into a polished shield. She silently prayed that her daughter's time in the armor wouldn't end like her own.

"Why are you helping?" Lykopis asked after a long silence. The Roman horses were nickering outside still, but the sound was growing more and more distant. "You want Galahad gone."

"And he will stay gone," Anaxilea countered. "For fifteen years, he will be gone and so will my daughter." She drew a long breath, and Lykopis could see the years on her face in that moment. "I was not meant to be a mother," she said simply. "Tereis was the only reason I was successful with you. You were a girl. You were of my people. Now, I can't even remember what my people looked like. That boy...that boy is mine. He is my family, and as damned as I am for wanting him dead, I'm more damned for asking you to bring him back."

"You aren't asking," Lykopis said, suddenly uncomfortable in the armor and the hut. "I'm going on my own."

"And I'm letting you," Anaxilea said. "I'm letting my only daughter go after a boy I never called son. Tell me how my Goddess would forgive that?" The woman asked, tears running down her cheeks. Lykopis had no answer, so she gave none. Instead, she pulled the claws across her hand and picked up the rucksack she'd packed earlier, when the red maned bastards had first come up over a hill.

"Fifteen years," Lykopis said simply. "We'll talk if you're still alive."

"Fifteen years," Anaxilea agreed. "They'll sing songs about you in fifteen years." The idea wasn't as repulsive as the scoff Lykopis gave suggested it was. "You remind him of who he is; don't let him forget like I've forgotten." Anaxilea gave the command firmly, and Lykopis nodded. It was all the communication either could handle, and Lykopis ducked out the front of the hut while Anaxilea left through the back.

Quietly, the younger woman followed the Romans as they picked their way from village to village across the Crimea. It would be a long fifteen years. She looked back over the wind swept grasses that she was crossing, wondering if she'd miss the salt-speckled nothingness.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: This chapter will be perhaps the longest in the entire piece. I told myself that no more than three chapters would run prior to the starting of events in the film. Technically, this chapter is the start of the film, but there is a great deal woven into here that you just don't see. For instance, how these boys become captive. The next chapter you're going to see how Romans turn boys into men. Additionally, thank you for the reviews! I enjoy this piece, so will probably finish it rather quickly, but I adore reviews, so the more the faster chapters will come.

**Chapter Three: Collecting Souls**

**-Gawain-**

Lykopis shadowed the Romans over the foothills, something that was easily done as their bright red manes stood out from a great distance. They camped each night far longer than Lykopis needed, so she caught up in the shadow of the moon, moved past them, and waited once more for the large group to bypass her.

She thought for a long while that perhaps the Romans would content themselves with her village and the few they'd visited along the way. She'd been wrong. She'd been so very wrong.

The first was a quiet thing, with three young boys slipping amongst them without question or ceremony. Several more passed the same way, until Lykopis was sick with the Scythians. Their futures marched out to nothingness. Fifteen years. Fifteen years, if they returned, and in those fifteen years, their future would no longer be theirs.

She stopped shadowing them, and started slipping past more, into the villages and waiting until the Romans caught her up. No one questioned her too closely. What did they have to question? They'd see the Romans on the foothills, and they knew that it was just a matter of time. They were too distracted in their preparations to much care about a young woman slipping in and out of their village.

In their preparations, they cried and begged. They raged and promised. The promises were what turned Lykopis's stomach the most.

She'd sat down against a well after refilling an oilskin and pulling bits of dried rabbit from a rucksack. A few feet off, a young couple shared kisses, whispering promises that were caught by the wind and brought to Lykopis.

"Come back to me," a red haired girl begged, big green eyes staring intently at the young man. And he was a young man. Lykopis's own age, with large arms and a strong back already, he would be what the Roman's needed. A wild mane of golden brown hair ran down to his midback in wild curls and tangles. The young woman ran her fingers through that hair, rubbing it between them and smiling.

"I promise," he whispered to her before kissing her soundly.

"I'm going to miss you," she murmured against his lips. "I'm going to miss the feel of your hands and my fingers in your hair." She smiled soft lipped and watery eyed. He kissed her again, and muttered something that Lykopis didn't hear.

He drew a dagger from a boot and brought it up to his hair, severing it close to his scalp with ragged sawing motions. The leather thongs kept it mostly together, and he laid it across her hands. He whispered something into her neck that Lykopis wished she hadn't heard.

"Don't cut it again until you're with me," the girl demanded, and the young man nodded. "I mean it, Gawain. You will come back to me." She tugged at the short hair on his head firmly to bring him back to her for another kiss.

"I will come back to you," he echoed before turning away from her and meeting with four other young men-all around his age-to ride out to meet the Romans before they made the town.

Quietly, Lykopis wondered at their eagerness, until her eyes caught a few younger ones, only Galahad's age, hiding with the girl children or behind their mother's skirts. She stilled at that, back pressed against the well, marveling at the strength that it took to ride out and meet their deaths head on. She eyed the young, sobbing woman with a new light.

That night, as she slipped from the village by moonlight, she wondered at the strength of children, of young people, of men that had not yet known what they were going to meet. The world passed quickly beneath her feet, until a sobbing and a rhythmic cracking echoed over a flat trough in the land.

In the distance, something sparked and died out repeatedly.

Lykopis followed it, eyes well adjusted to the dark. The moon had long since faded down into the horizon, so the brief flares of light were welcomed. In the flashes, she made out hunched shoulders and fair hair, a soft form and the glistening of tears.

She watched Gawain's lover a long while in the darkness, catching glimpses as the girl tried to light a fire. Sharp eyes caught the grasses she was using, knowing that they had a thick core of damp sinew despite their dry appearance.

"Damn it," the girl whispered as she struck the stone again. "Damn them all," she muttered. Finally, she gave up, throwing the flint and striking stone away. In the dark, it rolled, nearly colliding with Lykopis's foot.

"Your name, girl?" She asked in the quiet. Even in the darkness, she could see her jump, turn to the sound.

"Who's there?" She asked, and Lykopis sent her eyes heavenward, silently asking her mother's gods for strength.

"I asked your name," she replied, bending to lift the flint and striker. Sorting through the grasses at her feet, she picked the most dried, the most brittle, arranging them in a little pyre with a small bundle of kindling that she carried with her, collected during the day, when the sun was at its hottest and the grasses their driest.

The striker only found purchase once before the kindling caught. Soon, the girl was huddle on the other side of a small fire, viciously rubbing at her shoulders for warmth.

"Thank you," she said simply, bending low over the flame to try and glean enough heat. Lykopis didn't respond. Instead, she stretched her legs out on either side of the small blaze, letting it warm her to her bones.

"Your name, girl," she repeated, but it didn't hold the ire it should have. Not for this girl. Not for a thing that couldn't even light her own fire. The winters here were not as severe as they could be on the coast of the Black Sea, but she would soon catch her death.

"Izi," she answered, and Lykopis laughed down into the fire. The girl glared at her indignantly, her reddish brown hair falling over her shoulders and into her face, giving her a more fierce look than she'd had before. "My parents called me the fire; they didn't teach me how to start one." She snapped, and in that moment, Lykopis saw what Gawain saw. There was strength in her, even if it was untempered. "Who are you?"

"Oir-pata," Lykopis answered simply. The girl's eyes widened in the firelight. The word of Amazon was known among most of the Scythians. The slayers of men. Lykopis had been called that how often as a child, when she held a weapon or mimicked something that Dnaestre was trying to teach Galahad.

"But what do they call you?" Izi asked, and Lykopis wondered a long while at the girl's need for the knowledge.

"Atanea," she finally said. "Your people call me Atanea."

"And what do you call yourself?"

"What does it matter what I call myself?" Lykopis asked finally, leaning away from the fire and rising to her feet. "Will it matter what they call you in the morning, when you've half frozen? Go home, little Izi." She turned away from the fire only making it a few steps before a heat bloomed against her shoulder.

Quickly, she turned, slapping at the burning and glaring down at the end of a burning stick from the fire. With a snarl, she turned back toward the girl. "I will do no such thing!" Izi yelled at her, voice carrying over the flat of the land.

"Why?" Lykopis knew the world was growled, that it was low and angry. "Because you will follow your lover until your death? Because you think it better to die at a Roman's hand than to wait the fifteen years?"

"Yes!" Izi shouted, rising to her feet. The girl had tears running down her cheeks. Promises. Lykopis hated the whispered promises the most. "I would follow him anywhere," Izi raged. "I would die in a year if it meant that year was at his side."

"And what of his death?" Lykopis asked finally. "When the Romans find you trailing, and he is compelled to defend your honor? What of the wicked needs of men too far from their wives? What of when they kill him for defending you? Because they will kill him, little girl."

"I...They won't-"

"Oh, they will," she countered. "They'll do it the Roman way. They'll bind his hands and feet to separate horses and let them pull at him a while, breaking bones and dislocating joints. His skin will pull and it will only take a gentle tap..." Lykopis stepped around the fire, into the girl's space. "Here," she pressed two fingers to the girl's breast bone. "And your Gawain will be torn in four."

"No," a little sob escaped her throat. "No, I won't be-"

"Seen?" Lykopis cut in again. "Because I've seen you since you left your village. You are not stealth. You are not strength. You, little Izi, will go back to your village in the morning. You will learn as your friends will learn, that your futures are set for you, and you will wait for him."

At her knees, the girl collapsed, sobbing into the thong of hair that he'd given her. Lykopis stood a long while, staring at the girl before she sighed and dropped into a crouch beside her. They weren't so different in years, not really. They really weren't so different in desires, either.

"Go home when the sun rises, Izi," Lykopis ordered. "Go home, and in fifteen years, if your Gawain lives, I will return him to you." Startled eyes rose to meet hers.

"You follow them," she said simply.

"I follow them," Lykopis agreed.

"What gives you the right to send me away?" Izi demanded, that fire back in her eyes both from the reflection of the slowly dying pyre and from within. "You'll get your lover killed just as easily."

"I don't follow a lover," Lykopis said simply. She thought a moment before reaching behind her to pull the wolf's head up over her own. Normally, the hood felt wrong, but there, in the flickering firelight, with the stars above and this girl in front of her, it felt right. "And Lykopis is never seen."

"Lykopis..." The girl turned the word over in her mouth twice before her eyes slipped from the hood to the set of claws that hung harmlessly at her waist. "A girl really can't keep them safe, can she?" She asked finally.

"No," Lykopis answered.

"But an animal can," Izi said firmly. "An Oir-pata can." Lykopis thought on that less than a moment before nodding, the firelight making the gesture seem bigger than it was. Quietly, the girl turned away from the animal and settled in front of the fire once more.

"In the morning-"

"In the morning, I will return to my village," Izi said. "And in fifteen years, a wolf will bring my lover back to me." Those eyes turned on her again. "Or I will hunt down every wolf that has ever lived and kill it." Lykopis laughed up into the stars.

"You could try," she said. "If your Gawain lives, I will bring him to you."

"If he doesn't?" Izi's voice was remarkably strong for the question.

"If he doesn't, someone will bring news to your village." Lykopis said, though she wasn't sure it was true. Would the Romans even know where they'd collected each of their new slaves? Would they bother to inform their families of their deaths?

The pair sat in silence, and in the morning, when Lykopis woke, Izi was gone. Instead, by the long gone fire, a leather thong of hair sat, well loved but abandoned.

-R.P. Wolf Moon: Gathering Souls, Gawain-

Galahad was trailing behind, had been for the better part of three days, and Lykopis's sharp eyes didn't miss that with each day, it took him longer and longer to catch up when the Romans called a halt to their long march.

Another boy, a year younger than Galahad and no more than just off of his mother's breast and walking, was with him. The two spoke together, though of what, even Lykopis's ears weren't that good. They slept beside each other at night, sharing their fears and their nightmares.

It had only been a few weeks into their march when the Romans grew tired of the strays. Lykopis watched, flat on her stomach just over the rise of a hill, as a red-maned man jumped from his horse, urging both boys forward with a sharp kick to their backsides. The smaller boy stumbled and fell. Galahad nearly lost his balance, but regained it with several quick steps.

They were slow moving forward, and he drew his blade, urging them on with the flat of it. Silently, the wolf slipped her bow from her back, fingering an arrow delicately. Galahad and the other boy had fallen far enough behind, Lykopis was sure she could kill the man, take her brother and be gone in silence.

Except the Romans knew. The Romans knew everything, it seemed.

Where the clans went. How there were just a few more boys hiding amongst their mother's skirts. Would they know where Lykopis would take Galahad? Would they know?

She had heard it said that the Romans once worshipped deities that were similar to her own, if not the same. Did they answer the Romans' prayers still? Did their new God? Another slap with the flat of the blade had her rising just enough to level the bow and draw the arrow forward, ready if it needed to be used.

"Oy!" A voice cut through the air, and just like that, Lykopis relaxed her arm. The large Sarmatian horse barreled between the Roman and the two boys, and an arm reached down to draw Galahad up into the saddle in front of him before the other boy was pulled behind. "They're boys," Gawain nearly growled at the Roman. "Half starved and not big enough to have been taken to start."

The Roman shouted something Lykopis couldn't hear as the young lion kicked his heels into his horse.

That night, the two boys did not sleep alone. Curled up to the belly of Gawain's horse, all three sat, sharing their quiet fears and their fire. Damn him, Lykopis thought as their fire flickered in the distance. Damn him, but something in her cared that he survived the Romans.

So, as they marched and took more villages, she watched him, telling herself that it was simply because her brother rode before him. She watched the night that they all fell asleep, the nameless younger boy between them. She watched in the morning when that boy didn't wake. It was the first time her brother had known death, the first time he had known grief.

It was a dark thing.

Lykopis did not watch again for many days.

**-Tristram-**

It was a village as different from her own as it could have been. The wide, open plains had given way to dots of foliage, corpses of trees and narrow streams. They'd come upon a large pine forrest, too thick to really see through, which served Lykopis's purposes well. It was easier to hide amongst the trees than on a wide, flat land.

Three Romans were left with the children, their swords drawn and eyes sharp. The other six took measured steps through the underbrush, their long capes tangling with brambles and their tall, proud helmets catching on branches until they were forced to remove both as the forest thickened.

The village was not one that Lykopis was ready for. Small but bustling, men and women shouted at each other-either in jest or anger or both-and children ran amongst their parents' feet.

The houses were taller and made up entirely of the timber around them, and Lykopis wondered at the time it must have taken to build up a village like this one. A sharp cry broke the air, and she was startled from her study of a pair of dogs as they chased each other through the villagers.

Above, up in the trees, the cry came again, and Lykopis's eyes had a difficult time picking out the form of the hawk there. It hadn't missed her though, or the six Romans that still weaved behind her, through the trees.

"Ay!" Someone shouted from below, and the jovial hustle changed into a scramble. Four young men ran from their homes, swords and bows in hand, tossing weapons amongst each other and their fathers.

When the Roman stepped out from the tree line, they were met with what Lykopis had expected all along: resistance. With their bronze swords as their armor, the Romans were a force to be reckoned with, but there, in the forest, they met a wall that would cost them.

It started as civilly as anything that starts with weapons can. An old man, face twisted by some ailment or injury, spoke in clipped words that Lykopis couldn't quite make out from amongst the trees.

As all fires, this one started with tinder, a shout from a young man that hid behind his father's shoulder. A spark igniting in the belly of the Romans. Drawn weapons and the slightest of movements caught the kindling and ignited the blaze of bloodshed.

Her sharp eyes caught the hail of arrows down from one of the taller buildings, and the projectiles picked off two Romans before another kicked a burning ember from a campfire into the wooden beams of the lower level. She caught a flash of dark hair and pale skin before the archer disappeared from the window.

Below, on the ground, the few men old enough and capable enough to fight were dealt with in a well practiced manner that left none standing except two proud Romans. Lykopis turned from the site and backtracked back toward the main group where three Romans remained. It would be too easy, she knew, to pick off the three and take Galahad and one of their horses. The question became of Rome, how they responded and where they could run. Would they send an army through the whole of Sarmatia as they had done in the past? Would they hunt them down to the end of their days?

It didn't matter, because a few moments later, the two living Romans came through the treeline, dragging two struggling boys behind them.

Roughly the same age, they were mirrors of each other, one dark haired and eyed and the other light haired with eyes a color Lykopis couldn't place at such a distance. Both were forced to their knees, one beside the other. No one missed the firm look they sent each other or the way that their shoulders brushed harder than necessary from their positions, lending strength.

Not any older or younger than herself, they were proud, too proud to bow before the Romans and beg for their lives. One of the Romans crossed to the other three, no doubt telling them what had transpired in the wood. Annoyed with the silence and difficulty hearing as the last Roman spoke to the other two, she tracked around, slipping through cover that wasn't truly thick enough to keep her covered as she'd have liked to listen.

"Let this be a lesson to you all!" The Roman shouted, and a sick stone fell in Lykopis's stomach. "Choose between you." The Roman told the two kneeling boys, who turned firm eyes on each other. Finally, the dark haired boy looked away, eyes coming up to meet the Roman's with a fierceness that she hadn't seen in some time.

"I will not fight your war. The first weapon you put in my hands will end Roman lives," he said. "He will fight your war." He turned back toward the paler boy, who's jaw had fallen and eyes had gone wide.

"Tris-" he managed to say before he was hauled up by his elbow and toward the other group of boys. "Tristram!" He shouted the other boy's name fully.

The Roman who Tristram had spoken to drew his heavy bronze sword, laying the tip in the grass in front of him, head bowed in prayer.

"Tristram, you bastard, you fight this," the paler boy shouted. Still, the dark haired boy kept his head bowed, not watching as another Roman helped keep his friend contained. The executioner lifted his blade, walking around to Tristram's back.

"I'll kill you," the other screamed, throwing elbows and thrashing, and the way his eyes-green, how could they have been anything but green?-stared hard at Tristram made Lykopis question who he was threatening.

The heavy bronze sword came up and the Roman asked for last words. Tristram, on his knees, finally raised his head, those dark eyes finding his friend over the small heads that separated them. They widened and his jaw fell slightly in horror before Lykopis realized that the paler haired boy had throwing a lucky elbow, catching one of the Roman's off guard and letting him twist free, one of their heavy swords in his hand as he left across the short space between them.

"Din!" Tristram shouted, but the Roman stepped around him, the bronze blade coming up and down in a wicked parry and slash. Din dropped to the ground in front of Tristram, those green eyes nearly lit with a sickened glee. "You stupid bastard," Tristram muttered, watching as the blood bloomed across his shoulder and well down his left side, thick and fast.

"You cheated first," Din managed to mutter, his green eyes staring back at his friend before they closed. Even from the treeline Lykopis could see the rise and fall of the boy's chest as Tristram was forced to his feet and bound with a length of rope to a Roman saddle.

Even through the growing smoke from the burning village behind her, Lykopis could see the dark haired young man walk backward at the end of his lead, refusing to turn away from his friend's last minutes.

There, standing in the smoke, Lykopis made the hardest decision she had ever made.

She let her brother go.

In the passing next hour, she tended the wound, pressing thick herbs into the deepest parts and binding them closed as she'd seen old Tereis do once with a hollowed bird bone and twine.

It looked well enough and the bleeding stopped quickly, but the boy named Din did not stir for several long hours. In the quiet of the failing sunlight, she wondered if he would. If she'd made the right decision, and most of all, if she'd catch her brother in the coming days.

Din woke the next morning with the sun, his face scrunching up in pain as he forced himself to sit upright, one hand to the wound in his chest. "Gods," he muttered, eyes falling closed against the glare of the sun.

"Hell looks a lot like home," he mused, as he once again opened his eyes. Lykopis sat across a small fire from him, her sharp eyes watching him. "You're new." He said, tilting his head just enough to indicate a question.

"I bound your wound," she answered simply. "Your friend lives, but the Romans marched on last night."

"Ah," Din murmured, eyeing the work that had been done on his chest through the gap in his top made by the blade. "I live, so I thank you."

"What you did was foolish. They could have just killed the pair of you," Lykopis said what had been itching at her mind since the moment the pale haired boy had fallen. He studied her a long moment.

"You haven't many friends, have you?" He asked, but he shook his head at his own question. "I would rather die with him than have him die alone."

"You would have died alone," she countered, and he gave her a rueful smile.

"A chance I was willing to take," he answered, and she nodded, accepting it for the mindless chivalry between boys that it was. "You aren't from the village. Why were you here?"

"I follow my brother," she answered simply. "If I can catch them through the day and the night."

"We'd better get going, then," Din said, pushing himself to his feet only to nearly fall back over again. He took two staggering steps in the wrong direction before he shook himself and turned back toward her. "I am Dinadan, and I would be eternally grateful if you'd at least point in the right direction."

"You aren't going anywhere," Lykopis said simply. "You will rest and find another village. I don't gather sheep."

"No, a wolf wouldn't," he answered, eyeing the hood that fell across her eyes. "Maybe a pack, then?" He asked

"Can you fend for yourself?" She asked. "Keep up? March through the night and the day to find them and continue to keep up their pace?"

"If I can't, leave me to be picked at by the crows," Din said, and something in his tone made Lykopis nod. She stood up, kicking at the last embers of her fire. The pale haired boy took a few steps toward her, far more steady than his previous two and pushed her hood back firmly before she could stop him.

"Greetings," he said simply, staring her in the eyes. "If we're to march together, I'd know your name."

"Call me wolf," she said, turning away from him and starting toward the direction her brother had gone. "If we catch them, I won't have to kill you."

"If we catch them, Rome will do it for you," Din said, but there was no anger to his voice, just a morbidly jovial tone.

"We don't catch them, then," Lykopis said before she'd known the words were coming to her lips. It had been a long time since she'd had someone to talk to. Perhaps, she told herself, someone to wait out the fifteen years with wouldn't be unwelcome.

"I can't leave Tris-"

"I can't leave Galahad," Lykopis cut him off, turning in the dried out grasses to stare at him, taking his measure. He had no weapons, any that he one had destroyed in the burned out village the night before. He was tall enough, but still lanky as any teen. Worst of all though, was that she already had seen him hold a blade. Weak at the wrist and too much shoulder, he wouldn't have lasted but a few moments against her mother. "What do you plan to do?" She asked him finally.

"Wha-"

"Say you do catch up to the Romans, you can't just take him from under their noses. He's special to them. He stands out. They'd ride you down before you found your first patch of wood to hide in."

"Then I don't just take him," Din argued. "I'm patient, and Tristram and I talked about when the Romans came."

"Then what was your plan?" She pressed again.

"If one of us was to go, then the other would as well," Dinadan said simply. "We'd look out for each other, make sure that we both left alive."

"You show your face and the Roman will finish what he started," Lykopis warned. "Tell me how Tristram will forgive that."

"So I don't show my face!" He shouted at her, annoyed. "I hide and wait until I can get him out."

"Even if it is fifteen years?" She asked. "Because Rome will not let them slip through their fingers. Rome keeps what it takes."

"Yes, even if it is fifteen years," Din vowed. It was a foolish thing, she knew, gifting fifteen years of self imposed servitude, but it was something she'd done herself.

"Lykopis," she said and turned her back to him to continue the long walk ahead.

"What?" Dinadan asked as he followed her, lagging from the tension that movement put against his wound.

"If we're going to be skulking in holes and around walls with each other for fifteen years, I'd prefer you call me Lykopis." She didn't bother to turn as she explained, and Dinadan quickly caught her meaning. The night came and went, and just as the sun was rising over a little town in the middle of a wide open field, the pair caught sight of the group of children, nearly doubled in size, with a fresh group of red-maned Romans, some twenty in total.

**-Bors-**

The Romans left the children with only three guards, the rest wading through a ghost town of a village. Doors were shut tight. No one met them in the small dirt roads. No one made noise.

From across a windswept hill, Lykopis laid on her belly, watching as best she could, ear straining hard for voices on the wind. None came until an ear piercing shout that she couldn't quite make out.

"That's a war cry," Dinadan said from beside her, his own face lighting up in a smile. "We aren't the only tribe to challenge the Romans then."

"Yours won't be the only to die then," Lykopis muttered. They'd traded such barbs for the better part of the day and night, keeping each other on edge and as far away as was possible while traveling together.

"I don't see Tris," Din said quietly, and when Lykopis looked, his light eyes were searching for his companion amongst the heads. She quickly found Gawain and Galahad, atop his horse, but finding the darker haired youth was difficult. There were too many faces, but Tristram should have stood out a full head above the younger boys.

"There," she muttered, dark eyes finding the hunched form amongst the rest. He was bound-hands and feet-and sat against the rump of a horse as it lay down in the grass.

"He looks well," Din said simply, and Lykopis had to wonder at what Tristram might look like if he wasn't well or how Dinadan could even tell from such a distance. "Which is yours?" He asked her. It was a good question, really, because she and her brother bore differing looks. The question though, sparked another. Galahad rode behind Gawain on that horse, but it wasn't just her brother she swore to protect anymore. The older boy had done her job for her how many times in the past weeks?

"Those," she said simply, letting a finger come out and point well enough in the direction of Galahad and Gawain.

"Which?"

"Both of them," she said simply. "The younger is my brother. The other has protected him since he was taken. Both survive this if my life can mean the difference."

"All three of them," Din said, and when she looked at him, he was fierce faced and serious.

"I have my priorities," she said, knowing the response it would elicit after only a few hours with the other.

"Make him one of your priorities. The three of them survive this, all three of them, if either of our lives mean the difference." Within the village, one of the Romans shouted as another war cry was screamed loud enough for Lykopis to make out the single syllable.

A large, well stocked young man came around a home, face split somewhere and sending blood down the entire left side of his bald head and into his shirt. He held heavy daggers in both hands, using them both to bash and stab the Romans that circled him.

"A bull," Lykopis said easily, watching him fight. He split the skull of one of the Romans as another cut him deeply in the thigh, bringing him down to one knee only briefly.

"And old, for what they usually take," Dinadan muttered. In truth, the young man was probably three or four years their elder, but he was older than those she'd seen them take in the previous villages.

He stood shakily and charged again, but the wound to his thigh brought him down quickly and three Romans laid across his back, keeping him pinned while another tied his wrists and tossed his odd daggers into the dirt. Still, he bucked and lashed out with his legs, nearly biting the shoulder of one of his captors. A fighter, this one, Lykopis knew, a soft spot forming in her stomach. A good ally.

"Bors!" Someone shouted from within the village, and as he was hauled to his feet, a similarly shaped man stepped from a house. Old and bent with age, he balanced on one leg, the other long gone from some old battle. Under one shoulder, he propped a bent stick, keeping him upright. "Rous!" The old man screamed into the heavens, and the young man-Bors-echoed the war cry until the hilt of a Roman bronze sword came down hard on the back of his head.

He slumped forward into the dirt and was drug by his feet until a horse could be roused from the grasses to bind him to. As the Romans ushered their hoard of children forward, Lykopis stood on the rise. If Galahad would just look behind him...

"The four of them," she said to Dinadan as he stood.

"Four?" He asked, and glanced to her. He sighed as he followed her site of vision to the bull that they drug through the grasses, unconscious, bleeding, but alive and strong as anything. "Fine, the four of them," he turned toward her and held out his hand. Lykopis raked her vision over Bors and the two on horseback once more before turning to look at his hand. Quietly, she drew a dagger from her hip, cutting her palm before seizing Dinadan's and running it against the blade.

"Gods, what are you doing you-"

"Blood," she said, holding her hand palm toward him as the red ran down her wrist and dripped off her elbow. "Is a powerful thing to swear by." Din let his hand away from where he'd cradled it against his chest and looked at the wound. Not deep, but enough to draw enough blood to pool in the cut of us palm and drip off between his fingers.

"A powerful thing?" He asked holding the hand out again. She clasped it with hers hard and let go.

"Yes," she said easily. "It changes hearts." She muttered to herself, the memory of her mother flickering across her mind. Try as she might, from that day in the birthing tent, she couldn't manage the affection she'd felt as she'd stood at her mother's skirts and made her first oath.


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Initially, I had planned on creating some tie between all of the surviving knights and either Din or Lykopis, but realistically-and literally, writing wise-it just didn't make sense for there to be something so quickly with all of them. So, I've cut that, and decided instead to spend this chapter fleshing out the characters that are already tied to them and adding just one more. Mind you, just because one of them isn't tied to the pair early doesn't mean that I feel less or differently about them or that it will even change their fates. I just felt that certain characters spoke more deeply to my OC than the rest. And...I couldn't resist writing Dinadan into the piece. I know I took liberties with his looks, but I figured, to hell with it all, I wanted a good contrast.

**Chapter Four: The Making and Breaking of Men**

**Part One: Dinadan - A Woman**

They lost the Romans a week later, when the group splint into several smaller contingencies and went into different directions. At a distance, Lykopis couldn't pick out either Galahad or Gawain, and Dinadan had just as much difficulty.

Swearing to any god that would hear her, she followed the first to depart long enough to know that her brother wasn't there. Doubling back, she'd barely caught up with them just as Dinadan had retreated from another group. The argument they'd had when splitting ways long forgotten, they shadowed the larger contingency as closely as possible, sharp eyes looking for either of their charges.

In the clear sunlight of day, her brother was gone, Gawain with him, and the firm set of Din's jaw was confirmation enough that they'd lost them. Tracking, it came to be, was something that Lykopis was terrible at. Before she'd found Dinadan, she'd eaten what had fallen into her lap by luck or theft-villagers were often distracted when their sons were being stolen.

Dinadan, as it also came to be, was an excellent tracker, though, he admitted one evening around a campfire and two coneys roasting away, that Tristram was more accurate with the hunting. The hunting was of little consequence to Lykopis then though, as they backtracked through the Roman's path and Din's sharp eyes caught another divergence.

Days old, it was difficult to follow, and they found themselves only catching sight of Gawain lifting Galahad off of the horse and Tristram being drug onto a ship. Fear sparked in her stomach as they stood on the docks, mixed in with the locals that had come to see what the fuss was about. Men stood amongst women, and their dark hair, sharp noses and strong Roman jaws spoke of a settlement and not another Sarmatian village.

"How do we follow them in the ocean?" Lykopis asked herself, but Din heard her well enough, because his own mind was echoing the same fear.

"We can't," he murmured, face slack. "We can't track them in open ocean."

"Those are the Sarmatians," a high pitched woman's voice murmured to Lykopis next to her. "The barbarians that they take to Hadrian's Wall to serve Uther's son." Lykopis turned sharp eyes to the woman, who looked her up and down for the first time, as if realizing who she spoke to was far more barbarian than those they put aboard the ship.

"Hadrian's Wall?" Dinadan asked, a smile on his lips. The woman looked at him, hunger in her eyes and a smile on her own lips. Even Romans, Lykopis decided then, even Romans couldn't see past their own wishes.

"In Briton," the woman said, fanning herself coquettishly and staring down her nose at him. She was far older than he, old enough to be his mother in all honesty, but she looked at his green eyes and blonde hair like one that was evaluating a lover. Eyes traveled across his broad shoulders and down his waist.

"My lady, I'm afraid I haven't made your acquaintance in the past," he said, voice overly firm and words far from his usual speech patterns.

"Marggoria," She said, letting him take her hand and bow low over it. Lykopis turned away as her stomach revolted against the site. Another thing that her mind couldn't process that day in Gawain's village was the passion with which the two clung to each other. Now, in this settlement, the site of fake affection rotted in her stomach as Dinadan lead the woman a few paces off, speaking quietly into her ear as he held her arm to his elbow.

She slipped through the people, listening sharply to those that took supplies aboard before the final plant was raised and the ship left its mooring. Quietly, she sat on the dock, watching as the ship grew smaller and smaller in the distance. A short way off, she could hear a pair of dock laborers discussing the supply ship that would follow in a month's time.

A plan settled finally into the pit of her stomach, but the sour realization of a month without her eyes on her brother may mean his life was heavier.

"You sail the supply ship?" She asked from her seat. Both men turned toward her, eyeing her warily for a long moment.

"My brother," one finally answered. "Why?"

"Free labor," she said simply. "Free labor for passage for myself and another." She stood and crossed the few feet between them. "From now until the ship leaves and is seen safely to Briton."

"That's a month off!" The other shouted. "You'd be half-"

"Agreed," the other man said quickly, cutting him off. "From sun up until the end of day meal. You make enough for meals and to put a few coins in your pocket if you watch the ship through the night." Lykopis found herself nodding and reaching her scarred hand out to shake. Instead of taking it, the man dropped a coin purse into her hand, light with only a coin sitting lonely at the bottom.

"For tonight," he said easily. "The missus will appreciate having me home. Be here by sundown, or I'll come find that coin, even if its in your belly." He warned, and she nodded firmly before leaving. Dinadan, she reasoned, would have no trouble feeding himself for the month, what with his charm and that jaw the Roman woman seemed to enjoy staring at.

A few hours later, she sat on the bow of a ship, stomach threatening to spill into the ocean as it bobbed gently. A faint oil lamp shone from a few feet back, casting an eerie hue on the water below. "Better get off that boat," Dinadan's voice carried through the dark. "The owner wont'-"

"I watch the ship at night and work for the hand during the day until their evening meal," she said simply. "I'm free from their meal until sundown."

"That leaves you with a few hours to sleep," Din cautioned, but he'd seen the way that she stayed up most nights, only catching her asleep for an hour or two at the most before she shook herself awake.

"I cannot charm Roman women out of their gold," she said simply, a frown on her lips. She eyed him as he came into the oil light. His hair was disheveled, but his clothes were all where they had been before.

"Her husband is still to the east," he said simply. "She's lonely. I just ate her food and kept her company."

"I'm sure that is all a woman wants when her husband is several weeks hard march away," she countered, and Dinadan flushed deeply.

"She hasn't said anything-"

"Yet," Lykopis cut him off. "There is a supply ship leaving in one month. Try and tear yourself from her bed before then. I won't come find you." Din didn't say anything as he sulked off, annoyed and red eared.

He found her three weeks later, as she eased eggs into a boiling pot for several long minutes before putting them in a crate for passage within the week. He stood across the boiling water and eyed her for several long moments. Lykopis knew what he saw, because she had felt it herself. Deep bags beneath her eyes, a drawn look, tired and stretched too thin.

He looked much better, heavier than she'd remembered him, with new clothes-Roman clothes, her mind spat in distaste-and a coin purse strapped to his belt that was far larger than her own, which bulged happily where she kept it against her person at all times. She'd managed to earn far more than was promised, running errands and helping the dock hand's brother and wife in odd tasks.

"The painted whore returns," she hissed to herself, but if Din heard it, he made no reaction.

"When do we go?" He asked, as if he hadn't already checked himself. There was a change to him, one that she couldn't quite identify. A hardness to him that had been missing, even when he lay dying.

"Three days," Lykopis breathed, as if the words were on her tongue long before he'd asked for them. "Three days and we leave. You have to work for your passage while you're on the ship."

"I'll buy passage-"

"No," Lykopis cut him off. "You were soft before, and time with your Roman can have done you no good. You work for your passage, and when we get to Briton, if I still see in you the strength you showed for your friend, then we find Hadrian's Wall together. If I don't..."

"If you don't what?" Din asked firmly, annoyed at the accusation that he couldn't keep up with the labor. "You leave me? I'm not the one that was eating carrion and squirrels before we started traveling together." His reminder was sharp, mostly because it was right.

"Either way," she said. "The stronger would lose nothing." He nodded and eyed the boiling water in front of her.

"What are you doing?" He asked at length.

"The eggs go to rot unless they are cooked first," she said. "Boiled and stored in crates away from the sea water, they will stay well enough to eat."

"I have everything I need," he said easily, taking the wire wrack that she used to dip the eggs in with from her firmly. "Go, gather what you need and meet me back here before sundown." She eyed him a long moment before leaving. There were things she needed, things that they would need if all four of them were to survive the years.

The weapon smithy had spoken with her long and hard over the weeks ago what she'd asked of him, debating over prices and metals and the different aspects of what she'd asked for. In the end, he had haggled less over price and more over quality, as the time for the finished product came.

She ducked through the door, catching site of his only son, bent in the corner. Jaris was his name, and he had been stricken with an illness as a child, leaving one of his legs much shorter than the other. Even the act of walking was painful, and he couldn't stand at the forge for long hours, as his father did. His mother had died giving birth to him, and his older sister had been lost to the ocean years before.

The father-Ethris, damn it girl, not smithy-caught site of her with a wide lipped smile and swept her into a one armed embrace. "Ly, it is good to see you, when you can slip away," he said firmly, leading her back into the deeper recess of the forge.

"Come, they are done," he said proudly, preening over a table until Lykopis stood beside him. There, in a trunk lay two matching pieces, designed for large hands-Ethris's own had been the mold-to slide into. They were daggers much like those that Bors had used that day in the village, except these had been designed to protect his knuckles. The metal wrapped up and over them, padded on the inside with sheep's wool. The metal tapered off to a blade, wicked and curved back nearly the length of Ethris's forearm. They would be good for offense and defense, slashing and blocking. She smiled as she tested their weight.

"Beautiful," she murmured, and Ethris nearly vibrated at the compliment. He'd placed four different models before in the past, all shot down for some defect or another.

"The bow," Ethris said simply, offering over a heavy Sarmatian style bow. At first, it had taken him a long while to realize that she'd wanted it not for herself but for her brother, who was by far younger and weaker than she, but who would grow far stronger. He pulled the string back easily, but Lykopis knew that her brother would never rival the size of the smithy. Their father hadn't been an overly large man, not like Ethris.

"Arrows?" Lykopis asked, and the smith gave her a small clutch, just ten, but they would serve. Rome could supply arrows, but they would give Galahad a bow that he could draw with ease.

"You're sure you'd not rather something more manageable for him now?" He asked her as she slung it across her back and chest, the weapons for Bors long since tucked into her pack.

"It ends lives," she said simply. "It should be the most difficult thing he does every day, drawing this bow."

"It might get him killed, if he can't do it," he cautioned. "He won't be strong enough for many years."

"He's not meant to be," she answered. "This isn't for now." She fingered the delicate carving in the handle of the bow. "Your mark?" She asked, and he nodded, a proud father.

"On the other as well?" She asked, but she already knew the answer. He was a proud man, but he had every right. He'd remade and remade until her specifications had been met.

"I have the axes as well, but they're rather less specific," he cautioned, and she nodded. It hadn't been a specific thing she'd asked for. One heavy, meant for blocking and close combat. The other light, small but strong enough to throw and lodge in a man's chest. Gawain wore one at his hip, but it wasn't of the quality that these were, shining and strong, untested but waiting for blood.

"Perfect," she finally said, letting them join the other's in her pack. With nimble fingers, she drew her coin purse and gave it to the big man. He weighed it in his hand for a long moment before nodding and letting it slide, forgotten to the table.

"Did I ever tell you that Jaris's mother was Sarmatian?" He asked, and Lykopis shook her head. There was no purpose. He knew he hadn't. They'd spent hours on end discussing weaponry but only a few odd moments about themselves.

"No," Lykopis said.

"She was," Ethris murmured. "Beautiful hair and eyes. Dark as night." He turned his eyes on her and sighed. "My daughter was the same. She'd be your age, if she'd have survived."

"I am sorry for your losses," Lykopis echoed the sentiment she'd said when she'd first heard, except now it was genuine. She knew Ethris now, before it had been something to fill silence.

"Here," he said after nodding, pulling a large pack from beneath the table. "You're a poor liar, and you're less Roman than she was." He smiled warmly. "You follow your brother, but you aren't ready for it." He gave her the pack and pulled the tie open at the top. Inside were clothes, folded and rolled together neatly, something shined in the bottom of the sack, and he reached in, pulling it out and holding up a necklace, shining in the sunlight. On the end, a large black stone hung.

"I cannot accept this," she said firmly, watching as his eyes following the glint off of the gem.

"Obsidian," he explained. "And the only stone I found that reminded me of her eyes." The light caught and reflected off of the surface as he hung it around her neck. "The way I felt, the purse was too heavy for what you were taking. Go. I won't be indebted to anyone." He gave her an affectionate one armed hug and pushed her from his forge.

She went, wide eyed and clutching the pack to her chest, unsure of what all was within, but sure that should Ethris call for her, she'd have more than a hard time not heeding him to stay at her brother's side.

-The Making and Breaking of Men-

Lykopis couldn't help but laugh as Din puked up his egg over the side of The Gull.

"S'not funny," he muttered, head still between his arms as he spat out into the waves. Over the past month of sitting on the boat, even in mooring, the steady rocking motion had become nearly soothing to her. Din hadn't stepped foot on a boat in his life, and it was evident in the way that he couldn't do more than a few seconds of a task before heading toward the railing.

"It's a little funny," Lykopis told him, slapping him hard on the back before leaving to check that the cargo didn't come untied in the hull of the ship. It was two weeks into the voyage. There had been a rough go of it for a while, the wind blew in the wrong direction, forcing them back from where they'd come more often than it took them forward. Finally, the wind had turned, letting them bring Briton into view. The Captain claimed they'd make land by nightfall.

It was a good thing too, later that night when they eased against a rocky beach with a row boat. They'd run through the rations for the first half of the voyage and had threatened the return trip. A carriage awaited them, loading two wagons full before moving onward, through the rolling hills and sporadic trees.

Lykopis hadn't spoken to Dinadan since they'd left the boat, choosing instead to let him stew. There had been moments between them since boarding that had been friendly, but for the most part, they kept their distance. Now, she stooped low over a small pond, testing the water with her nose and tongue before drinking from it.

Din stood a few paces away, looking down in the still water, a cross look on his face. "Are we going to settle this?" He asked finally, and Lykopis looked up through the holes in her hood. He had kept up well enough on the ship if he was a little worse for the wear. His clothes were as filthy as hers, and with a sigh, she straightened up and stood in front of him, head tilted just to the side before she shoved him, hard, back into the pond.

She chuckled as he came back up, sputtering and rubbing his hair from his forehead, where it had been pushed flat. "Explain before I pull you in," he warned, catching his footing in the rocky ground and standing, the water no higher than his waist.

"The smell of her perfume on your clothes made me sick," she said simply. "Come on, we have to get to the Wall."

"All four of them?" Dinadan asked as he caught up to her, still dripping and now shivering in the cold. Lykopis eyed him for a long moment.

"Might as well be all four of them," she muttered. "Bastards keep doing things to make me want them alive."

**-Wolf Moon: The Making and Breaking of Men-**

**Part Two: Tristram - A Brother**

Tristram wasn't sure how long they'd been marching. There had been a time of sailing before, and marching again before that. Yet, none of it was quantified. None of it was real.

How could it be?

No. It wasn't real. A nightmare. A dream. He'd made some wood-witch angry, and they'd laid a plague on his sleep.

He only wished that he'd wake. It was getting harder to remind himself that it wasn't real, that Dinadan wasn't gone, and that he'd broken the promise he made to himself. He didn't fear death. He didn't fear a Roman blade or an arrow or any man alive. He feared for each step he took though, because with each step, his dream grew longer and more difficult to swallow down the truth.

Because he knew the truth. He knew. Somewhere bone deep, where he'd ingrained who he was and who he wanted to be, he knew that Dinadan was dead. They'd made promises, whispered in the woods or around fires late at night, the stars blinking down at them, that they'd stand by each other. They'd go with each other wherever the Romans wanted. They'd live and die by each other's sides, just as they had for sixteen years. Sixteen long years that were lies.

Lies cut short because Dinadan couldn't shut his mouth and do as he'd told him. Fight the Roman's war. Let Tristram die in the grass. Of course, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't see it, Dinadan would have done the same thing. He would have knelt there and let the Roman behead him without question if it meant Tristram walked away alive.

They were both liars.

A hawk screamed overhead, crying out in anger as it was chased from a meal. Still, his eyes looked west, despite the thousands of ocean and grass and mountain. Din would be picked clean by now. He knew how a corpse rotted, how it was ripped apart by the scavengers of the land.

"Hold!" The call to stop the march was shouted and he halted. They'd reached Hadrian's Wall a week and a half prior, and the Romans had them marching up and down the length of the wall-conditioning, they called it-in the evenings after a short meal and the morning wrestling training.

Now would be a mealtime. Something groaned deep in his abdomen. He ignored it as they were funneled through the wide gait and into the barracks that had been set for them. A meal would be laid out-stew of some kind, it was always a stew of some kind-but Tristram would let most of it sit there, forgotten as he tried to think past the pain in his stomach to remember that this was just a dream.

It was about a week later when he collapsed during their run down the Wall. He hadn't really noticed that his frame was getting slighter. He hadn't really even noticed when he started lagging behind in the run, when he started losing during the wrestling in the mornings.

It didn't really matter though, because as he rolled over and stared up at the sky, vaguely watching as a bird rode thermals hundreds of feet in the air, he didn't care. There wasn't much that could make him roll back over, climb to his feet, and finish the run back to the gate.

Something moved to his left, a few hundred yards off in the wood, but he didn't turn his head. Didn't look. He didn't even care if it was one of the blue-painted local people that the Romans whispered about into their wine.

No, in that moment, nothing mattered, and he simply closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he wasn't overly surprised. The Romans let nothing go, not even a boy who washed out of their training. He was a bit surprised though, when an apple landed squarely against his breastbone.

"Who are you?" He asked, sitting upright quickly, words hushed slightly to keep from waking the boys on the cots a few feet away from him.

"Does the answer to that question mean anything?" The form asked, voice decidedly female. A hood was pulled up over her head, hiding her features well enough with the shadow that he couldn't make anything out in the darkness.

"No," he bit out the word as if it tasted bad. He dropped his eyes, staring down at the apple in his hands. His brow furrowed, the memory of the last time he'd been given a similar fruit springing into his mind unbidden.

Dinadan had tossed him one each morning for the past few years. He'd found a tree in the forest and safeguarded the location so fiercely that he refused to tell even Tristram where it lay. Instead, he brought him an apple every morning. If he were being honest, he'd missed the tang of the fruit on his tongue almost as fiercely as he missed the other man.

"The answer to the question you should have asked is: yes, I know what it means," she pointed at the apple in his lap. She turned in the shadow and slipped through the cots, leaving him to sit, weak as a just dropped fawn and twice as shocked.

In the dark of the barracks, he stared down at the apple, smaller and green instead of the deep red he was used to, but it was still an apple. It still meant home and something that he wouldn't bring himself to qualify.

Instead, he brought it to his lips, bit into the flesh, and laid back down, chewing slowly and trying not to allow himself to register that what he'd finally admitted as truth could in fact, be lie.

Lykopis slipped through the Roman fort, cloak pulled forward, covering her wolf pelt and anything that might identify her as any one person. They'd made Hadrian's wall only a few days ago, and what they'd seen had frightened Dinadan far more than she ever thought possible.

_Dinadan had spotted them first, running along the expanse of wall. He'd been hesitant to approach as closely as they had, but Lykopis and his own eagerness had insisted. They'd spent the better part of the next few days just watching, making sure that everyone was still alive. _

_Din couldn't tell at first, not really, not until they were on the last leg of their run when Tristram fell, knees colliding with the dirt, chest following. Then it had taken the better part of his own restraint and Lykopis burrying a foot into his stomach to keep him down until two Romans came out and drug his body back beyond the gate. _

_"I'm going to kill the bastard," Din hissed as Tristram disappeared inside Hadrian's Wall. "He's going to get himself killed." _

_"He should be able to handle that run," Lykopis agreed, eyeing the gate. _

_"He's not living," Din said simply, straightening up and taking a few steps backward into the wood. "I need a few hours, and after that, I need you to do something." He kept walking, disappearing into the trees. _

_"Because I'm your dog now," Lykopis murmured, leaning back against a tree trunk and sinking to the ground, watching the heavy stone wall and itching to find her brother on the other side. _

_She'd waited until nearly sundown, when Dinadan found her again, a small red object in his hand, he'd pressed it into her palm and told her to take it to Tristram. _

_"Take it yourself," she countered, but she knew that the Romans would question a male much more than a female. _

_"No," Din said simply. "He needs to learn to live without me at his side." He paused for a long moment, rubbing at his stomach as if it ached. "And I need to do the same. People...people cannot always be what we want them to be, and he needs to realize that. He needs to get stronger." _

_It had taken the better part of four hours to slip past the guards and into the barracks, and it took the rest of whatever willpower she'd left since she watched Galahad walk away with the Romans to not find the boy and leave with him._

The next night, Dinadan repeated the process, never bringing more than one apple and always the same color and size. Lykopis slipped past the wall easily enough, as she had grown accustomed, and waited until nightfall.

Tristram was awake, sitting up against a wall just inside the barracks. It was a staging room, where they kept their weapons and most of the equipment the Romans allowed. Lykopis slipped past him, not seeing him in the dark and quiet.

"Does he live?" The question came firm and strong. Lykopis flinched, spinning around and drawing the hood up over her face.

"Does who live?" She asked.

"You know who."

"No," she said after a pause. "No, I don't."

"Then how do you know what this means?" He asked, pointing to the apple she held. She paused, tongue frozen in her mouth. Dinadan had reasons she trusted to keep his silence. They all needed to learn to live on their own. Relying on a man in the woods to keep him safe would only make him less likely to survive this.

"I've watched boys starve before eating the meat the Romans put in front of them." She said simply, shrugging a shoulder. "I thought that if it came from someone else, you'd be willing to eat."

Lykopis swallowed around the lie. It sat sour in her mouth. She'd never developed the taste for the lie, never grew accustomed to the acidic burn that it left behind on the tongue. She tossed him the apple, watching closely as he caught it and studied it a long moment.

"You lie," Tristram said, voice dark. "Tell him to leave. I do not want his charity."

"Don't be ungrateful," she snapped. His dark eyes caught her, and she knew that she'd walked into his snare as mindlessly as a hare on the run. She stood there a long moment watching the young man, who looked down at the apple now like it held the meaning to life. He sighed deeply, took a bite, and chewed it with a slow reverence.

"Thank you," he said after a short time, half of the apple gone. She nodded, sighing and sinking down across from him in the small staging area. "I understand."

"You understand what?" She asked, glaring at him through the eyes of the wolf.

"He can't be here. The Romans would have taken him. So, he picked you up along the way." Tristram shrugged one shoulder. "He's very charismatic. I understand why you're with him." He paused a moment, studying what he could see of her through the dark. "Not his usual type though."

Lykopis sat quietly for a long moment before shaking her head and fighting off the laugh that came as she made sense of his statement.

"I've seen his type," she muttered. "Painted and with more coin than he can manage. I picked him up. Roman did his work well outside your village. He'd have died, bled out."

"He should have done as he was told," Tristram said firmly, but there was none of the anger that she'd heard in his voice before. "He'd have done better here than I."

"You're not making any friends collapsing on the run," she said easily. "And you're not doing yourself any favors by starving yourself."

"I'm not-"

"He saw it in you the first time he saw you," she cut him off. "You can't...you can't let anyone know that we're here watching."

"Rome would take him and put you to slavery or worse," Tristram said simply. "I am good at keeping secrets."

"Good," Lykopis said, pushing herself to stand.

"If he didn't bring you, why are you here?" Tristram asked as she went for the door. She stood there a moment, looking out at the moon as it slowly started to sink into that endless darkness that enshrouded everything in the small hours of the morning.

"I am here to serve as a reminder to someone that was taken," she said at last. "I'm to assure that he lives and then I'm going to make sure he knows who he is despite what Rome has made of him."

"He's out there with you though," Tristram said, and something in him settled. "He's good to have in a bad situation. He'll take care of you." Lykopis laughed at the young man.

"We're too busy making sure you don't starve and none of the rest of the flock do anything stupid," she said easily. "There's not much time to worry about anything or anyone else." She slipped through the door in that moment, gone to the night time and the silence. She could feel his eyes on her as she slipped into the darkness.

**Part Three: Gawain - Responsibility**

Gawain had been watching as another recruit tossed Galahad some five feet in the sand pit, sending him sprawling once more. The boy hadn't faired well when they'd paired them off, and there was only so much Gawain could do while he was dealing with his own opponent.

He heaved as a knee collided with his abdomen, doubling him over and spattering the sand with bloody spittle. He groaned and gripped the foot, rolling and sending his opponent-Kay, another older Sarmatian-to the ground.

He let Galahad slip from his line of view and turned his attention back to Kay. The dark haired boy was difficult to grapple with, strong and agile, but he wasn't unbeatable. Gawain tackled him hard, pinning his arm behind him and drawing it back until the other boy shouted surrender.

Again, those eyes found Galahad, who was standing, blood dripping from his lip down off of his chin. The boy was still fierce faced as he tackled his opponent, sending him to the ground and laying into his rib cage with balled fists.

"That's it," he muttered.

"What's it?" Kay asked him, following his line of sight for only a moment. "Let the boy be," he said. "He'll survive or he won't. There's no sense in distracting yourself over him."

"I'll decide what's worth my distraction," Gawain said, and Kay let the subject drop easily. He always did, and for that Gawain was constantly grateful. "Besides, if I wasn't distracted, you'd be forever cleaning the latrine trenches after meals."

"Seems fair we split it," Kay said with a chuckle, clapping him on the shoulder as the Romans called them in for weapons training. They'd been using the staff for the better part of the past two weeks, and Gawain quietly hoped for Galahad that they stayed on the bladeless weapon for a little while longer.

It wasn't that the boy couldn't use a staff as well as he used his fists; it was just that he used neither well enough to keep his skin intact without sharp edges. He wasn't disappointed that day, as they paired up yet again to train.

That night, as Gawain and Galahad settled into their bunks, side by side, he wondered at the quiet resilience in the boy. There hadn't been a day when he'd not bled, when he'd not been thrown or when he'd not bruised, and yet still, each morning, he woke and drug himself from bed. Of course-Gawain smiled up at the ceiling-he'd moaned about the early wake up call every morning since they'd arrived.

He sighed and rolled over, trying to distance his mind from the boy. It didn't help much. That night, they'd spent most of the evening taking turns crowding over their bowls and eating. Several of the older boys-Gawain and Kay had a plan for them-had taken to stealing food from the younger ones, and Galahad, being one of the youngest, had taken it the hardest. Gawain had convinced Kay to let the boy eat between them, and so the problem had lessened significantly.

Still, he had to wonder at the desire in his belly to protect the kid. He'd never had a younger brother or sister. Hell, he'd never even taken care of the dogs that the village children seemed to orbit around. So then why, the question rankled him, did he feel the need to defend a boy he didn't know?

Shaking his head again, he forced his eyes closed and into sleep.

The Roman call to arms came entirely too early the next morning, and he nearly growled when Galahad started whining about the early hour. Instead, he bit the inside of his lip, rubbed his hands through his slowly growing hair, and patted the kid on the shoulder.

Wrestling came and went. Arms training came and went. The Run-because it wasn't just a run, when it was up and down the length of the visible Wall-came and went. Mealtime came and went.

He settled down into his bunk one more time, just like all of the other times. The days had become a monotony of the same thing, over and over again. Something itched at the back of his mind though, something that was stinging but dull. He couldn't place it except for the vague feeling that something had been different. Something, during the Run, had changed.

His brain itched during the night and again throughout the entire Run until late in the evening. Again and again, day after day, something new scratched there, just on the surface. The itch was easy to find when he was looking for it. Eyes in the woods, watching, waiting, and in an instant, he believed the Romans. Woads. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them.

A danger. A shiver in his spine.

He'd taken to lingering at the back of the run, keeping Galahad well in front of him and carrying the wooden axe that the Romans had given him at his hip. It was lighter than his old one, but they didn't allow any weapons from their previous lives beyond the Wall.

He stood along the path they'd worn in the grass, hands on his hips panting under the pretense of catching his breath as his eyes swept the treeline, trying to find the eyes that made him itch.

"Gawain!" Galahad's voice startled him from his study. "Gawain, come on. It's not that far," he said simply, pointing over his shoulder, where the gate had come into view. With a smile, he dropped his hands and started running again, the kid falling in step behind him. He was shorter, had to take more steps to keep up with Gawain's stride, but Galahad kept at it.

He lay down to sleep on his cot that night, eyes wide and staring at Galahad, as he slept soundly on the cot next to him. That, he mused, as sleep eluded him, that was why.

**Part Four: Bors and Dagonet - Pride and Honor**

Lykopis had taken to walking through the little village during the daytime. There was little they could do as she came and went as long as she brought in furs or game to trade with the locals. Yesterday, she hadn't had enough to entice the doors open. Today, she had two days of foraging and hunting strapped to her back, an apple hidden in a pocket of the cloak she wore.

It had been weeks since she'd seen Bors, and she was more than a little nervous that he'd been put to his death on their march. Now, well past the gates and free of all but the apple and some extra coin, she roamed through the settlement, sharp eyes catching and skittering.

Bors wasn't a quiet man though, and she heard him long before she saw him.

Collared and bound at both feet, he was left in an arena of sand and dirt, bound to a large pole driven deep into the ground. He'd been given enough of a lead to nearly reach the end of their imposed prison.

She leaned against the railing, watching him as he sat against the post. He was slighter than she remembered him, physically and somehow less.

"Stay away, miss," a young man said to her, and she turned, looking him up and down. "That's not a man in there."

"Looks to be a man," she said easily, turning back toward him and leaning against the railing again. Something sparked in Bors the some forty feet away, and she smirked out at him as his head inclined just enough to catch her eyes.

"He's being punished. He's killed three of the Romans." She turned away from the young man and eyed the older that was cautioning her away from the arena.

"He's to kill me with feet and throat wrapped up?" She asked. "Go see to your work. Let me worry about my own life." The man started slightly before nodding and leaving her alone, standing at the edge of the settlement with the familiar young man sitting across the arena from her.

"Big words, little girl," he said, rising to his feet, legs shaking far more than they should have been for such a gesture.

"Big man for such little words," she countered, eyeing him. "I saw you across the sea. You fought awful hard to keep yourself from the Romans. Now you're just sitting here?"

"Ey!" He shouted, coming to the edge of his rope, a few feet away from her. Lykopis stood her ground, letting him get close enough to study her face. "You don't know nothing," he said, spittle flying from his mouth.

"I know what I saw," she said easily. "I know they took one of you from that village. One." She cocked an eyebrow. "How many hid in their homes while you distracted the Romans?" He fell silent, studying her with a level head.

"Observant, ain't ya?" He asked, relaxing his posture.

"What I can't figure out," she said. "Is why you'd work so hard to defend people then but leave all these boys without anyone to watch their backs."

"Ey, I did my share. Let'em watch themselves." Lykopis had to admit, staring down the bull of a man, that he probably had. "B'sides, Romans are so busy with me, they leave the little ones alone."

"Except they don't," Lykopis said easily. She sighed, fishing through the pocket on her cloak to find an extra bun she'd traded for in the market. Bor's eyes flickered over it for a moment before he looked back to her. "They die for your pride. The Romans bested you once on that field. Every day you spend here, they best you again. Don't let them. Don't lay here and die like a dog."

"What's it matter to you?" Bors asked. "Why are you here?"

"My brother," she said simply. "And the rest of you don't deserve what you're going to be getting."

"He old enough to look after 'imself?" Bors asked, and Lykopis just stared at him. She wouldn't be asking if he was. "Gimme a name n'I'll see the kid lives if I can," he said. Lykopis nodded, tossing him the bun and turning to walk away.

"Need a name, girl!" Bors shouted after her, and she turned, looking just over her shoulder before pulling the hood up over her head and letting him catch site of the wolf's head.

"I don't need anyone to protect him out there. I've got that," she said easily. "What I need is someone in here that knows I'm out there, that knows not to let the others kill me." She dropped the hood back down.

"Don't skin the wolves," he said easily. "Got it." She nodded and continued into the light of day.

It was two weeks and several smuggled meals later when Bors was released from his prison. He did as silently promised, posturing and shouting, drawing attention but never so much to see him gone again. They'd moved onto the sword, and watching from as close as she dared as often as she dared made her nervous.

Bors was paired with a tall, quiet boy, more muscle than brain, if her assessment was anything to go by. He dropped the sword each time it was placed in his hand. He took a beating and stayed silent. The romans had flogged him and cut him, and still he didn't learn, dropping the blade each time it was laid in his hands.

Finally, a week into the sword, Bors snapped.

"Eh, dog," he said easily, holding the blade out threateningly in front of him, circling around the silent young man. "You want to die?" He asked.

"No," the quiet boy said, voice gravelled.

"Then pick up your sword!" Bors shouted. The Romans ranged around them. Normally, they'd break up an altercation between their recruits, but the bigger man was at the end of their experience.

"No," he said just as quietly, just as strong.

"Because you think they're making you kill with it?" Bors asked, turning wide and holding his arms out wide. "You think you're killing for Romans? You kill for them!" He said, pointing the blade at a pair of smaller boys.

"I won't kill for anyone," the taller boy said firmly, and Bors grunted at him.

"Then you die; you want to die, dog?" He asked, brandishing the blade at him again.

"My name isn't dog," the taller boy said, dropping his knees slightly as Bors paced around him.

"Sure it is," Bors pushed. "You can't defend yourself if you don't pick up that sword. Dogs die on the field. Get ready to be a dog." He kept pacing, angry and posturing. "You ready to die, 'cause I'll do you a favor now!" He swung the sword around his head, form terrible but the threat real.

"I am not a dog," the taller boy shouted, dropping to his knees as Bors brought the blunt side of the short sword down on the back of his knee.

"You're already on the ground!" Bors shouted, swinging the blade around his head again. The bigger boy's head bowed, and in an instant, the blade was in his hand. He howled, coming up and spinning to meet Bors's sword as it came down.

The Romans stood, wide eyed and silent as the last half of Bors's sword buried deep in the sand. The taller boy stood, blade in hand, chest heaving after the shout he'd let loose as he'd spun, striking heavily and severing the blade.

"The dog has teeth," Bors chided, and the taller boy straightened, his grip on the blade strengthening. "What's your name, boy?" He asked.

"Dagonet," the taller answered.

"Dagonet!" Bors shouted, spinning wide again, prowling the arena like he owned it, coming to rest just in front of a young woman with dark hair and eyes. The Romans allowed the locals to watch the young ones practice, and she'd been a regular, attracted to what, they didn't care. "Dagonet." He told the young woman again. Quickly, she nodded, turned on her heel and left the practice staging.

Out in the wood, Lykopis dropped her cloak over a branch, shaking out her arms and pulling the claws back onto her hand as Dinadan handed them to her. "Five," she said simply, and he sighed, hanging his head in his hands.

"Are we collecting sheep, Lykopis?" He asked, and she shook her head.

"Another wolf," she said simply as she pulled her bow back across her shoulders.


End file.
